I focus almost exclusively on PvP, whether solo, small gang, or large bloc warfare. In the past, I've been a miner, mission runner, and faction warfare jockey. I'm particularly interested in helping high-sec players get into 0.0 combat.

Tuesday, December 27, 2016

Playing in Small Increments

For the past six years, work and family have absorbed most
of my time, and relaxation activities fell into the gaps. More often than not,
I’d either have to drop them or cut into sleep to enjoy them. Physically, it’s
amazing how much getting the proper amount of sleep can change you. I’m a lot
more clear-headed, am yawning a lot less, and am generally a lot more pleasant
to be around. It’s amazing how easy it is to miss gradual changes.

The past month has been a busy one, preparing for Christmas
with two kids, finishing out the year at work, and enjoying some time gaming,
albeit much less than before. Whereas previously I’d spend a little time before
bed each night playing, for the past month and a half, I’ve only snatched an
hour here and there.

That said, I’ve quite rarely been playing Eve. Oh, sure, I’ve
been playing the heck out of Skyrim, and after the Steam sale, I’ve been
enjoying Total War: Attila and Stellaris. The reasons for that shift really
speak to some of the long-term challenges Eve has faced.

On paper, the launch of alpha clones should have generated a
lot of excitement for me. More people in space needing to learn about the game?
For a site like mine, it’d be ideal. I should have been reposting old articles,
creating new guides, and addressing some of the emergent problems alpha clones
were facing. That would have likely meant lots of time reading through the Eve-O
forums and reddit, scouring them for insights.

Only, that’s exactly the kind of time sink I just can’t
manage anymore. A month ago I shared that I wasn’t leaving Eve, only reducing
my level of engagement. That meant a lot less reddit reading. I tool my hands
off the tiller, as it were, and decided to try to just enjoy the game and talk
about my experiences.

In so doing, I discovered the truth of something I’d really
only considered in passing. Eve is not a game for casuals. By that, I don’t
mean that casuals don’t belong. The game would undoubtedly be better without
them, and it desperately needs its new blood.

No, what I mean, perhaps put a little more clearly, is that
Eve is not suited to a causal playstyle. Is that really a surprising comment to
make about a game that promotes itself on saying, “We don’t provide content;
players are the content”?

Many bloggers are casting about for an explanation as to why
new players leave the game in such high numbers. Some point to the fact that so
many of the game’s institutions – corporations, alliances, and communities –
tend to push you to play more and more often. Pap links, kill requirements, external
chat servers like Discord… they all deepen the engagement to get you to be able
to respond and log in immediately. You end up playing the game even when you
aren’t playing the game.

The natural state of playing Eve is to become more and more
involved naturally over time. By limiting your time, you limit your deepest
possible level of engagement. Simply put, you miss everything worth participating
in on a community level. Supercap kill about to go down? Well, you missed it
because you weren’t on Discord. Find an interesting PvE site that someone
needed help with? Too bad, they couldn’t contact you.

And, honestly, there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s only
reasonable that before people can work together, they need to communicate. Being
an active part of a community should result in better and more enjoyable
content.

The real problem comes from the nature of that content. Try
to play Eve for an entire month in half-hour sessions at a time. Just try it. I
suspect you’ll find the same thing I did; the first half hour, even the first
hour, of most types of gameplay are set-up, with nothing interesting happening
until will after that. The vast majority of fleets take a couple hours, and
most of them don’t even leave until half an hour in.

Even PvE content takes the better part of an hour to do most
things, with the exception of some missions (which may take half an hour
round-trip) or and an optimized cosmic anomaly. Eve simply isn’t a game that
includes options for quick fun.

Contrast that, if you will, with many other games out there.
Think of your favorite one. For me, I’ll consider space games (Stellaris),
multiplayer games (Counter-Strike), or strategic games (Total War). Sure, Eve as
a whole is different from them. But people don’t choose to play a game based on
an entirety of what they can do; they choose based on what they will do with
that session. What can you really accomplish with half an hour that compares to
half an hour with any of those other games in your library? In many cases, Eve
requires a critical mass of time before it’s worthwhile to even log in.

That’s the challenge really facing Eve. I hold to my
original belief that casuals are outside of the core demographic of CCP and Eve
Online as whole. They can certainly enjoy themselves and should be welcomed,
but Eve just isn’t built for casuals.

If you have a lot of time, Eve can be immensely rewarding
and rich game that reveals much about human behavior and the variety of
emergent gameplay. But if you don’t, it will often come in second when
considering which of the games in your library should fill some spare moments.

Ultimately, it’s not comprehension that limits the breadth
of Eve players, but the time commitment required to really accomplish anything
with a play session. That’s the real trick, though. How can you create that
popcorn content that’s engaging and worth doing, without unbalancing it for the
core demographic? Is it even possible, or is the attempt to capture both the casual
and hardcore markets impossible for one game to do effectively?

10 comments:

Catching up on blogs and I'm surprised I'm the first comment. Perhaps there's just a lot of silently nodding heads, or the timing after Christmas. I'm pretty much in the same place as you, though my time is perhaps on a mild upswing over the long run as yours is declining. Finding the right Eve playstyle that fits more limited time is a challenge, but the good news is that the sandbox provides lots of options I suppose.

That's the key, "I suppose". Perhaps my perspective might be different if I was a newer player slowly stepping up my play. As a veteran who's used to a certain level of immersion, stepping back has a hollow feel to it. Eve isn't made to leave you satisfied taking a back seat, which is both a strength and a weakness.

I agree 100% with you. I am through exact the same stages as you are at the moment. Finally i left eve even if i miss it often and know playing guild wars 2. because its also has a great pvp / wvw and is more suited for casauals!. I will continue to read your blog just to see where you end :) Cheers!

I went from playing a couple hours every day to playing perhaps a couple hours a week as a result of the shift in my time. That really took me below the threshold for Eve providing what I enjoyed. Eve really isn't set up to enjoy a la carte, fifteen minutes here or there, a couple days a week. So, I stopped really engaging with the game, and without the engagement, I didn't have a lot to blog about.

Essentially, I pulled myself out of the hardcore demographic into the casual, and Casual Eve isn't really that compelling compared to the alternatives.

I had to change my playstyle completely, due to health and work reasons. I can rarely play more than a few hours per week, if at all. My chars a all subscribed for a while but at one point I will have to decide whether it is worth keeping them, since I can't use them.

I know this is old news now but I feel like commenting as a recent major change to my own personal circumstances has turned me into a 'casual' too. I went from being self-employed and being able to manufacture the EVE time whenever I wanted, to returning to full-time employment, and my now-limited free time has become far too valuable to 'waste' on a video game.

I totally agree with you that EVE requires substantial commitment to play properly and explore all its features. The thing is, as far as RL is concerned, not having the time to be absorbed in EVE is actually a very healthy thing IMHO.

Subscribe via RSS

Copyright Notice

EVE Online and the EVE logo are the registered trademarks of CCP hf. All rights are reserved worldwide. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. EVE Online, the EVE logo, EVE and all associated logos and designs are the intellectual property of CCP hf. All artwork, screenshots, characters, vehicles, storylines, world facts or other recognizable features of the intellectual property relating to these trademarks are likewise the intellectual property of CCP hf. CCP hf. has granted permission to Target Caller to use EVE Online and all associated logos and designs for promotional and information purposes on its website but does not endorse, and is not in any way affiliated with, Target Caller. CCP is in no way responsible for the content on or functioning of this website, nor can it be liable for any damage arising from the use of this website.